S. Koreans, Taliban press for meeting

But in Washington, senior State Department official Richard Boucher said the United States is not ruling out military force to free the hostages.

A delegation of South Korean lawmakers left for Washington in the latest diplomatic effort to urge the United States to help end the crisis, which began July 19 when 23 Korean church group volunteers were kidnapped here.

Afghan officials said the captors agreed to meet with South Korea's ambassador, but they had not yet agreed on a venue.

"If the Taliban want to come to the area where we are for the sake of these hostages, 100 percent, they will be safe," Ghazni's Governor Marajudin Pathan said at a press conference.

But both sides have proposed places that could put them at risk, including the office of the provincial reconstruction team, which is run by international troops.

"The Koreans told the Taliban to come to the PRT, and the Taliban told the Koreans to come to their base," Pathan said in an interview.

Purported Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the South Koreans had not requested direct talks with the militants, but the insurgents would be willing to hold such a meeting in Taliban-controlled territory.

The Taliban "want to negotiate directly with the Koreans because the Kabul administration is not sincere about releasing the Taliban prisoners," Ahmadi told the Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location. The militants demanded the release of local Taliban fighters from Ghazni province as well as a former militia spokesman, Mohammad Hanif, Afghan officials said.

A South Korean Embassy official in Kabul would not confirm any Korean efforts to hold face-to-face talks with Taliban.

Ahmadi said 21 hostages were still alive, but two of the women were very sick and could die from illness. The Taliban have shot and killed two men in the group, which was abducted as it traveled by bus from Kabul to the southern city of Kandahar.

The Afghan government has said it is opposed to a prisoner swap out of concern it could encourage more kidnappings.

In Islamabad, a leader of a coalition of hard-line Pakistani religious parties met for one hour with a South Korean delegation seeking the Islamist politician's help to win the hostages' release.

Fazlur Rahman reported the delegates had said South Korea was offering an early withdrawal of its troops in a US-led coalition. He said in response, the Taliban should release the women captives and the sick as a "goodwill gesture."